


Chess, Not Checkers

by AlixZin



Series: Alex and Lin [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Anxiety, Chess, Child Prodigy, Christmas, Deceptions, F/M, Fever, Fluff, Foster Care, Hiding Medical Issues, Humor, Lin's sweater, Misunderstandings, Phobias, Sickfic, early relationships, foster dad lin, parent-child relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 02:07:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13940283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlixZin/pseuds/AlixZin
Summary: While recovering from a significant illness during Alex's first Christmas with the Mirandas', a certain chess deception comes to light.





	Chess, Not Checkers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Foster Dad Lin Collection](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6616012) by [ohNooOOOOoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohNooOOOOoo/pseuds/ohNooOOOOoo). 



> Set a month after "Where You Started"

“Hey kiddo, you awake already?” Lin asks softly, standing just outside the door to Alex’s bedroom, cautiously hovering inside the room as much as he can without his feet actually breeching its borders.  

Alex glances up at him from his position curled in a miserable-looking ball in his bed and gives a slight nod of acknowledgement.

“Did you sleep alright last night, sweetheart?” Lin asks, as if he didn’t already know the answer. Still incredibly green as a parent, Lin had never dealt with a sick child on his own before, let alone one as ill as Alex is; he’d woken up every few hours all through the night just to make sure Alex was still breathing. He knows from this that Alex had uncharacteristically slept deeply all night long (in fact, for the past few days he’d been doing little else), but it’s still comforting to hear Alex give a slight hum of confirmation.

“I brought your morning meds: antibiotics, fever reducers and all that jazz. Is it all right if I come in?”

Alex hesitates for a moment before once again nodding, though he retreats further back into the covers when Lin enters the room, vanishing enough so that Lin can only see his eyes sticking out from behind the blankets. One thing that he’s discovered very quickly these past few days is that sick Alex behaves very much like a wounded animal. He also doesn’t talk at all, much less _tell_ them when anything’s wrong.

Lin gingerly kneels down next to the mattress on the floor and holds out the glass of water and pills for Alex, guessing it would be best just to say nothing and wait him out as those normally bright, curious eyes now dulled from fever stare at him warily. The stalemate doesn’t last long; if for no other reason than overheating under the pile of blankets, after just a minute Alex unceremoniously throws them off of himself and takes the offering without a word. It’s almost comical. Almost.

As Alex swallows the pills, wincing slightly from the pain in his throat, Lin studies him carefully. He looks so pale, his face would be ghost-white were it not for the lingering rosy rash still on his cheeks, beginning to fade. Lin’s heart absolutely aches to see him this way, but he has to admit that Alex does look far better than he had been the past couple days. Then again, Lin would suppose that anyone would look better when no longer in a hospital bed.

“How are you feeling?”

Not at all surprisingly, Alex just shrugs. He has yet to have shared a single thing about what he’s been feeling with this illness, forcing them and the medical staff to have to figure it out through lab-tests and sheer guesswork as if Alex were a very young child. Lin can only pray that this sickness behavior is a one-time thing related to the newness of their relationship and that Alex isn’t going to do this every single time he’s under the weather.

“Do you think I could take your temperature this morning?” Lin asks in the same tone that one might ask a cat if you could put them in the bathtub.

Right on cue, Alex’s eyes go wide and he quickly snaps a hand over his mouth to cover it up protectively, shaking his head vigorously and whimpering in fright. Lin isn’t sure if it’s due to an outright vendetta on Alex’s part against all forms of thermometers or, as his mom had suggested when they’d first discovered the severity of his aversion, it’s a trigger item somehow directly related to his past abuse, but either way this refusal has certainly complicated their ability to care for him. Several times during the night when Alex had been out cold, Lin had stuck a thermometer under his armpit to get a reading (holding steady at 102), but now that he’s awake, there’s no way that’s going to work.

“Okay, okay, no thermometers. I got the message. Can I at least feel your forehead then?”

 Alex doesn’t reply, and instead merely stares at Lin with an unmistakably grumpy face.

“Please, kid? I really do need to know at least a general sense of where you’re at so we can stay on top of that fever. If it gets bad again we’ll end up right back at the hospital again.”

“Okay,” Alex whispers hoarsely, having at least been scared into partial compliance. Though the ER was hardly famous for its enjoyability, Alex’s misery there took it up to a whole new level. His entire time there was spent in sheer, blind panic  to the point where had he not been so incredibly sick, he’d  likely have taken off running as far away from that place as he could.

When Lin places a hand on Alex’s sweaty brow he can feel that the boy is still running far too hot with an obvious fever, but not dangerously so. It’s nothing like it had been two days ago on Christmas Eve. Alex had never said a thing about not feeling well and they had just assumed his being so quiet all day had to do with feeling overwhelmed by all the relatives coming to the party at his parents’ house. They hadn’t realized anything was wrong until sleep-hating Alex had fallen asleep on the couch among the craziness of Lin’s overexcited nephews running around screaming on a sugar-high. It was only when they were struggling to wake him up that they discovered that Alex had been absolutely burning up. The heat coming off him then had been terrifying to feel, it hadn’t just been a normal fever- he had been on fire. Once partially conscious, Alex wouldn’t let them get anywhere near him with a thermometer, so it wasn’t until they got him to the ER that they learned that his temperature had been just shy of 105 F.

“Am I going to live?” Alex whispers, his face unreadable as Lin withdraws his hand.

Lin is thrown by this question, not sure if it was meant as a weak joke poking fun at Lin’s overprotectiveness or if Alex is legitimately concerned that he might not survive this. He’s only known the boy a month now and isn’t fully in tune enough with his idiosyncrasies yet to know for sure. He knows by now that Alex has a unique, disarming sense of humor, but also that the depth of the pool of things he worries about is never-ending, so it could easily go either way.

“You’re going to be just fine, mijo,” Lin answers softly, choosing to veer on the side of caution and go with an earnest answer. “You’re already doing a lot better. Just keep resting up and taking those antibiotics and in a few more days you’ll be back to normal. Those pills are pretty powerful with these types of things.”

Alex nods again, but sighs a little as he does so, making Lin smile. Being bored with being sick is a very good sign.

“I know, this really isn’t any fun is it?”

Alex shakes his head morosely and sighs again, only this time louder and with a hint of sass.

Lin has to chuckle at his. There’s his Alex!

“Now, I know the doctors’ orders were strict bedrest, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stay in this bed. It could mean the living room couch with your pillow and blankets, so long as you stay put and aren’t up and about. That way you can watch TV, play video games and be less isolated. How does that sound?”

Alex hesitates momentary, likely preforming his rapid mental calculations, before at last giving him a thumbs up. He’s very much been relying almost exclusively on non-verbal communication right now, in a similar way to when they’d first met. One way to look at this could be seeing it as a huge regression, but on the other hand his throat is in pretty bad shape right now. It could legitimately just be due to pain.

“Do you need help getting over?”

Alex considers him warily at this, still not fully trusting, especially not when feeling so vulnerable.

“Not sure,” he at last admits in a whisper with a tiniest hint of a pout.

It turns out that Alex does, in fact, need Lin’s steadying support just to get off the mattress on the floor and into a standing position, but afterwards is able to walk on his own power over to the next room without any extra support. In contrast, Alex had been so ill and out of it just two days ago that Lin had had to carry him to his father’s car to take him to the hospital, and again the next day to take him home when he was discharged. This change is a huge relief off Lin’s shoulders, indicating that Alex really is just normal sick, as opposed to the terrifying version that he had previously been at.

Tobi had been curled up in bed with Alex all night, so Lin isn’t at all surprised when she follows him to the living room, matching his slow pace, and then joins him on the couch. In the past month since Alex has entered their lives Tobi has totally blown him away with her relationship with the boy. For one she has completely switched allegiances and there is little doubt who her favorite human now is—she’s Alex’s dog through and through.  What’s especially amazing though is her intuitive ability to read Alex and to always seem to know when she’s needed by his side when he’s struggling. Lin never would have guessed that his neurotic little mutt would have had it in her to be such a great therapy dog. Ever since bringing Alex back from the hospital, Tobi hasn’t once left his side, just instinctively knowing that all was not well with her boy and wanting to stand guard and protect him until he’s better. Also, while this is probably a huge projection on Lin’s part, he swears that lately his dog has been giving him accusing “what the hell did you do to him?!” glares.

Even with Tobi joining him, Alex has a hard time settling on the couch, not seeming to be able to find a comfortable position. He lets out a few involuntary whimpers as he squirms under the heap of blankets he had brought with him and within minutes gets tangled in them, leaving himself a truly pathetic sight.

“Alex, can I help you?” Lin asks softly after this has gone on for a while. Their relationship has developed enough that just a week ago he would have rushed forward to help him the second it became clear that he was struggling, but with Alex being sick touch has been freaking him out even more than it normally has. 

Alex thankfully nods in agreement even though he pouts a little at the defeat and with incredibly gentle hands Lin helps him get appropriately propped up on the pillows and loosely tucked under a single light blanket, with more off to the side in case his current feeling of excessive heat shifts to chills later on.

“Better?”

“Yeah,” Alex whispers.

“Good,” Lin smiles lovingly down at him and very lightly brushes the tips of his fingers across Alex’s hair in a light pet, before quickly withdrawing away. Best not push it.

“Now that you’re settled, can I interest you in some breakfast?”

Alex makes a face at him.

“Throat still hurt like crazy?”

Alex nods with yet another pout, flashing him his best puppy-dog eyes reserved for when trying to get out of something. Lin’s still completely helpless at resisting and Alex is quickly figuring this out.

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal just for this morning. I’ll let the food go for now, but you have to promise to stay hydrated and drink lots of water. Agreed?”

Alex gives him a thumbs up. He smiles slightly, seeming more pleased with himself then he should be given the circumstances. Already Lin can see him trying to use the sore throat excuse not to eat in a week’s time, even after the infection’s cleared up. At least by then Vanessa and Seb will no longer be quarantined away so she’ll be able to back him up.   

Not having Vanessa around these past few days has been tough. Bringing Alex home from the hospital yesterday should have been a huge relief, especially given how petrified Alex had been during his stay, but from Lin’s perspective the discharge had been terrifying. There he was, already an emotional train-wreak from the past 24 hours without a clue what he was doing and then the hospital staff had cheerfully handed Alex over all: “Here’s your kid! He’s got this 19th century, Little Women illness you didn’t know people still got, a high fever and delirium, doesn’t want anyone to touch him and is solely your responsibility to care for as your infant son and wife who’s nursing him need to stay the hell away. Merry Christmas!”

Clearly it had all worked out for the best, especially this morning with Alex doing so much better, but during those first few hours after bringing him home that blind panic had been very real. 

“Hey Lin?” Alex asks softly, pulling Lin out of his thoughts. He’s gotten so little sleep lately it’s currently far too easy for his mind to drift.

“Yeah bud?”

“Thank you for taking care of me,” Alex rasps out, not quite meeting his gaze in his shyness, but totally genuine in the message.

Lin can just about feel his heart melting at this. He loves this boy so freaking much. He wishes he could just tell him outright without freaking him out.

“Of course Alex, as your foster-father it’s my job,” he says instead.

Alex keeps his gaze downward, not saying anything but fidgeting aggressively with the corner of his blanket in a sure sign of unease.

“Is something the matter, hon?”

“J-just…you’ve b-been doing all this stuff for me a-and…what if I get you sick?” Alex at last glances up at him, with his brow furrowed and the worry evident in his eyes.

“That’s the last thing you need to be worrying about right now. I have a really good immune system so it won’t be a problem.” That last part isn’t necessary true, but Alex doesn’t need to know that right now.  

“I just don’t want you getting this,” Alex says softly, gesturing to his chest where they both know that horrible looking rash is still there hidden behind his pajama top.

“I won’t. Even in the worst-case-scenario where I catch the bacteria it would just be a simple case of strep throat, since as I’d go to the doctor at the first sign of illness and it would be over in a day or two. So long as I don’t keep it hidden and leave it untreated for a week there really is no chance of me getting scarlet fever,” Lin says gently, though the thinly veiled criticism does not go unnoticed as Alex immediately averts his gaze again, biting his lip and looking near tears.

Lin sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He really shouldn’t be so hard on the boy when it could not be more clear from the past few days that he’s legitimately terrified of doctors. At the hospital it had taken them nearly an hour to convince Alex to open his mouth for them just so they could _look_ at it, let alone do the swab, and the only way they had survived the overnight admission to the hospital to bring his fever down had been with Alex heavily sedated enough that he had slept through most of it.

“It’s okay, Alex, it’s not like getting this sick is something you did on purpose.” He probably did legitimately think it was just a funny virus that would pass on its own if he just kept quiet and toughed it out. “Just… just in the future could you please let us know when you’re not feeling well? Even when it’s just a cold, as your guardians we really do need to know about it. Preferably prior to it reaching a critical point like it did on Christmas Eve would be ideal.”

“I’m sorry I ruined Christmas.”

“What? No, I don’t care about that, Alex. It’s just a date on the calendar. We’ve still got all the presents under the tree and ingredients for a Christmas dinner in the fridge waiting on standby. Once that fever of yours breaks and Sebastian and Vanessa are in the clear to come out of hiding at her parents’ place we can celebrate it any day we want.”

Lin does note that Alex specifically did _not_ make any promises to tell when he was sick and instead changed the subject. That’s not a good sign for the future.

“You should be hiding too,” Alex whispers, much to Lin’s heartache and frustration.

“No way, I’m not leaving you alone when you’re sick, Alex. Besides, I told you my immune system is awesome so my chances of catching it from you are next to nothing. It’s a non-issue.”

“You really do have a good immune system?” Alex asks hesitantly.

“Rock solid. I hardly ever get sick at all.” Now that’s just a bold-faced lie. In truth he probably gets sick a little more often than the average adult (how many people get dengue fever?), but right now he just needs Alex to stop worrying about it and let the matter go. 

Speaking of immune systems, one additional source of worry- or more accurately, bafflement- is how Alex even managed to catch strep throat in the first place. He hasn’t even started school yet! For the past month Alex’s life has been spent very much as a shut-in, hardly ever leaving their apartment except for therapy appointments, walks around the neighborhood with Tobi or the occasional trip to the library or bookstore. The germ-pool he’s been exposed to has been miniscule and none of them have been sick so how Alex had managed to catch something is rather a mystery. He must either have really bad luck, a _really_ crappy immune system or both.

From the look Alex is giving him, Lin can tell Alex still isn’t totally buying his claim, so he decides to switch tactics and just figure out a way to distract him. Lin glances wildly around the room for ideas and his eyes quickly settle on their Christmas tree and the huge pile of untouched presents still under. Bingo!  

“You know, there’s no reason you can’t open a few presents now.”

At this suggestion, Alex looks at Lin as though he’s slightly stupid. “Vanessa and Seb aren’t here,” he says slowly, as if explaining it to a child.

“Yeah, I realize that, but it would still be okay for you to open some of them now. There’s no harm in it. It will be fun.”

Alex just shakes his head at this, a look of anxiety now starting to cross his features.

“Oh come on, you’re sick, you deserve a bit of spoiling. Vanessa won’t mind. I guarantee that if we call her right now she’d go so far as to tell you to open them all right now.”  

Heck, he wouldn’t be surprised if when she returns it’s with even more gifts for Alex to attempt to make up for her absence. Having to stay away has been hard on her. As soon as they had realized Alex was sick she had been ready to swoop in with some serious mom-cuddles, a plan they had had to abort as soon as they found that terrifying looking rash all over his torso.  Not knowing what it was but suspecting the worst (measles, meningitis, Ebola?!), they’d had to protect their other son, which meant divide and concur, and as the solo milk-producer that made her the default person to stay the hell away. Despite the increased responsibility part of Lin was relieved by that quick decision- he knows for a fact that if their positions were reversed and he wasn’t allowed contact with one of his boys when they were sick he’d be well on his way to a complete mental breakdown. 

Even with this assurance, Alex keeps shaking his head, glancing back and forth between Lin and the large pile of presents labeled with his name with a look of extreme anxiety. It is only now that Lin starts to clue into what’s going on- this is not about Vanessa’s absence- it’s gift anxiety. In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have gone quite so overboard with the gift-giving, but with it being their first ever Christmas with kids and with Alex’s gaping lack of owning any personal items it had been hard not to go overboard.

“What if you just open one small thing? If this is stressing you out, it will be good practice to make it more manageable when we do it for real in a few days. If it helps I can open one of my presents with you?”

Alex nods hesitantly, but does so with a pinched, worried face. There are actually beads of sweat dripping down his face. Odds are it’s just from the fever, but his current nerves over having to open a present could very well be a contributing factor.

Lin has no way of knowing which one is which when they’re all wrapped so he just goes and grabs a heavy one at random. His hope is for it to be the laptop they got him or one of the limited-edition books or even a new video game that will help to make his time sick and bedridden a little less miserable, and hopefully serve as a distraction.

When Lin returns with the gifts he selected for both of them, he pulls up a chair close to the couch so they can sit side-by-side before placing the gift in Alex’s lap. Alex stares down at it as though it were a bomb. This might not have been the best idea, not when he’s sick anyway.

“I swear it’s going to be okay, Alex. It’s Christmas. Giving presents to each other is normal. We don’t expect anything from you in return. We’re doing it because we care about you.” Because we love you, Lin amends in his head, but doesn’t say out loud. The kid is stressed enough as it is already.

Alex still doesn’t look convinced- the fear in his eyes is obvious. Slowly Alex points towards Lin. 

“Me first?” he guesses.

Alex nods.

Slowly, so as not to spook Alex further, Lin unwraps the present from Vanessa and pulls out a cozy-looking gray sweater.

“Oh this is really nice,” Lin smiles, going out of his way to model what an appropriate reaction is to receiving a gift. “Here Alex, feel how soft it is. I’m going to text Vanessa a thank you, she knew I needed a new sweater so this was very thoughtful of her.”

That part’s true. Lin’s never been great at buying himself clothes. In fact he’s fairly cold now- despite it being December he’s been keeping the heat set to low in an effort to keep Alex’s fever down, so he pulls it on over his shirt. Lin likes the way it feels immediately- the sweater is very comfortable. It’s definitely a new favorite.

“You look good in it,” Alex says, smiling up at him sweetly. He’s looking a lot more relaxed now; since Lin’s happy reaction had been genuine it was able to have the desired effect of calming him down.

“Thanks kid. Now do you think you could open yours?”

Though not nearly as bad as it had been earlier, Lin can still see the panic returning to Alex’s eyes.

“Come on honey, take a deep breath. You can do this. Who knows? Maybe Vanessa got you a matching sweater?”

Alex giggles slightly at this before at last picking at the edges of the wrapping paper, taking an absurd amount of time before making any discernable progress at unwrapping it. Finally it comes to a point where Alex must be able to figure out what it is because suddenly he freezes and stares down at it for a good thirty seconds before looking back up at him. Then to Lin’s enormous delight a grin slowly spreads across his sickly face.

“It’s a chess set. Thank you!” Alex says in a tone of both wonder and relief. Lin can already guess what he must be thinking: ‘thank god it wasn’t anything too expensive’.    

While not the one Lin had been hoping to grab, it’s probably for the best that Alex started with the most innocuous of the presents. A chess set is a relatively tame gift of the kind he’s probably more used to receiving as a foster kid. Had they started with the iPhone or laptop it likely would have been too much for Alex and he likely wouldn’t have been able to open any more later on without having a panic attack. Sometime later when Alex is sleeping, it might not be a bad idea to open up his presents and sort them based upon their likelihood to freak him out and then re-wrap them with some sort of system that allowed him to know which one was which.

“I thought you might like to have your own chess set.”

“I would. Thank you, it’s perfect.” Though now looking highly fatigued and increasingly pale from the ordeal of stressing over presents, Alex’s eyes truly do light up with pure delight as he examines the box, which leaves Lin having to choke back happy tears. Getting him that chess set had truly been a last-minute impulse buy, and he now couldn’t be happier that he had given into it.  

“Do you…do you wanna play?” Alex at last asks him shyly, after first taking the time to carefully examine every inch of the box. Lin loves that Alex likes his gift and he loves that Alex wants to share it with him, but the kid looks like he could keel over from exhaustion at any second.  

“I do, but honey you look so tired. Maybe you should take a nap first and we can play once you wake up?”

“I don’t want to,” the teen half whines, half huffs. Alex returning to avoiding sleep at all costs is certainly a sign of things returning to normal, but still Lin worries. He just isn’t looking good right now.

“Alex, is it okay if I feel your forehead again?”

Though the insidious look he gets says otherwise, Alex gives a tiny nod in agreement. It’s hard to know for sure without a quantifiable measure, but it doesn’t feel like the fever has changed at all. The source of the current dip in his appearance is probably just exhaustion- after all this has been the longest stretch of time he’s been awake and lucid since falling sick. Or more accurately, since he became sick enough that they were made aware of it.

“See, I’m a-okay. Please can we play?”

Lin snorts. Having scarlet fever and a temperature of 102 that refuses to drop hardly counts as okay, still he has to admire the boy’s tenacity.

“Yes, of course we can.”

Though the exhaustion just seems to radiate off him, the delight on Alex’s face when Lin agrees is plain to see and the two of them set to work opening up the new box and setting it up.

Within minutes of starting the game it becomes obvious to Lin that something is different. The moves Alex is making are not at all like the way he normally plays. They are far more aggressive, for one thing. At first Lin thinks that maybe because he isn’t feeling well and appears so spaced-out he isn’t being strategic and is just throwing out random moves without any thought behind them, but it’s not long before he realizes the opposite is true; the moves Alex is making are hyper-strategic, though to look at him he barely seems to be paying the game much attention at all.  

Puzzled, and realizing that he’s in very real danger of losing badly, Lin goes all in and for the first time gives the game his 100% effort. Normally playing with Alex is a difficult dance; he knows that Alex doesn’t like Lin going easy on him, but he doesn’t want to crush him either, so he’s always careful to play just slightly above his current skill level. Now he’s holding nothing back, yet still it’s not enough. Within a matter of minutes Lin realizes that Alex had lured his king into a trap that he has no means of escaping from, leaving him absolutely dumbfounded. 

Since Lin is far from an expert player- prior to Alex coming into his life he hadn’t played chess regularly since his days at Hunter- Alex had at this point managed to beat him a couple of times, but just barely. It would probably be more fair to call those occasions a stalemate with Lin giving it to him, as they always occurred in heated games where they were neck-and-neck that would draw out for hours and with Lin giving him multiple hints along the way. This is something entirely different. Here Alex is spaced-out, fever-ridden and clearly not paying much attention to the game, yet he’d still just executed a highly advanced expert-level trap for him within the first ten minutes of the game. Sure, Alex is a fast learner, but what he’d just done was still years above the skill level he’d demonstrated just days ago.

“Alex! What’s happening here?”

“Chess?” Alex answers slowly, his lethargic bewilderment indicating that he doesn’t have a clue that anything is out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, I know we’re not playing checkers here, I mean this whole situation. What’s happening here, Alex?” Lin says gesturing to the board.

It takes him a second, but Lin sees the exact second that Alex understands what Lin’s talking about and his eyes widen in horror. Clearly this was not something Alex had stumbled upon by sheer dumb beginner’s luck—he knows the exact implications of this setup.    

Alex just gapes at him, not seeming to have any reasonable answer or reaction for this one. Triumph would make sense here: perhaps Alex had been studying up endlessly on strategy and this is the moment he had worked hard towards, but that doesn’t appear to be it at all. He looks like a little kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar.

“It’s your move, bud,” Lin says at last, having to do everything in his power to try to keep a straight face.

Hesitantly Alex picks up his knight and moves it far away from the action. Nice try, but there’s no way Lin’s falling for it now.

“Nada, you and I both know that wasn’t your plan. Bring it back and I want you to bring this brilliant little trap of yours to completion.”

Alex freezes up, gripping his piece tightly enough that Lin can see the whites of his knuckles as he swallows multiple times and licks his fever-chapped lips in anxiety.

“Do it, Alex,” Lin insists, smiling at him encouragingly.

“Ch-checkmate,” Alex whispers to the floor after at last moving his piece.

Lin grins ear-to-ear as he pushes over his king in defeat. That was easily the quickest game of chess he had ever played, lost to a child who was obviously too ill to have given it his 100% effort. If he had to guess, Lin would say it was the fever-fog of his illness that caused Alex to slip up from the normal concealment he must have been putting up and instead had just played normally.

“Oh you are so busted! You’ve known how to play chess this whole time, haven’t you?”

Alex opens and closes his mouth a few times, not knowing what to say, instead just staring at him wide-eyed and shell-shocked.

“Of course you have. This isn’t some Marvel movie where you got bitten by a radioactive bacterium and got chess superpowers via a fever.”

Lin can’t help it now and bursts into hysterical laughter. Only with this remarkable boy would he get into such a bizarre set of circumstances.

“Good job, bud, I’m so proud of you,” Lin quickly reassures him, when he glances over at Alex and sees the fear in his eyes as he watches him warily.

“Not mad?” Alex whispers, suddenly looking and sounding like a very small child.

“No mijo, I’m not mad. I’m amused and perplexed, but not at all mad.”

Lin slowly reaches forward to give his shoulder a gentle reassuring squeeze and when Alex tolerates that turns it into a brief side-hug. Alex breath hitches slightly when he does so and Lin can feel all of his muscles tense up, but he doesn’t flee or otherwise panic so overall he counts it as successful contact. Still, Lin longs for the day that Alex willingly accepts touch and physical affection from him. These past few days have been especially hard: having an obviously sick and suffering child in front of you and not being able to provide comfort goes against all basic human instincts.  

“Alright, truth, how long have you been playing chess for?”

“Since I was six,” Alex mutters, to which all Lin can do once again is laugh.

This kid is something else. To not say anything when it first came up out of pure shyness he can understand, but to keep it up for as long as he did, to play with him almost daily and to actually seek him out for more lessons is another thing altogether.

“Okay now Alex, why would a chess prodigy such as yourself go to such lengths to pretend not to know how to play?”

Alex doesn’t answer, merely stares forlornly down at his hands.

“Hey kid, come on, you’re not in trouble here, I just legitimately want to know what’s going on in that brilliant brain of yours.”

“I ruined it,” Alex at last says sadly.

“No, you didn’t. I told you I’m not mad at you and I most definitely want to keep playing with you, especially now that I know what a force you are to be reckoned with.” What must it be like to play chess with Alex when he is functioning at full capacity and actually _trying_ to crush him? Lin’s both excited and terrified to find out.

Alex sighs dramatically at this. “It won’t be as fun. I liked the challenge of figuring out how to move each piece in relation to how a novice should be progressing and what you’d taught me so far before making each move. It was like its own game of mental chess within the game that made things more interesting. Now it will just be… chess,” Alex croaks out glumly.

Now it’s Lin’s turn to gape at Alex speechlessly. Of all the reasons he had considered for Alex’s deception- too anxious to say anything, didn’t want to hurt his feelings, an elaborate long-con meant to swindle Lin out of money- finding ordinary, non-manipulative chess boring had not crossed his mind. Good god, what must it be like inside this boy’s brilliant brain?

“So…,” he says at last. “Do you know how to play checkers?”

Quickly catching on to what Lin’s doing, Alex shakes his head with a huge grin on his face. There’s almost no way that’s true, but at least for now he’ll let Alex carry on the ruse and teach the boy anyway.

 


End file.
